Preparing for Fieldwork

It is time that we start preparing for fieldwork! Since I am part of the first group we will be teaching first! We are going to be teaching a 6th grade science class. I am a little nervous about teaching 6th grade! My groups topic is properties of minerals and classifying rocks. I know this is not the most exciting topic to cover, so my group and I are trying to plan fun activities that will engage the
students as they learn.

While planning our lessons, we have to keep in mind ways that will grasp the students attention. We have to think about what students enjoy and how we can incorporate that into our lesson plans. On our first day of fieldwork, we are going to get to know the students better. Hopefully we can learn more about them, what they enjoy and what they like about science. We can use this to gear our lessons towards the interests of the students. It is very important for the students to be able to connect with the lessons to make it more fun, relatable and worth while.

During our lessons we also need to think of ways to track students progress and understanding. This can be done through assessments. We need to plan diagnostic, formative and summative assessments. We as teachers need to assess students before our lessons, during and after. We can assess the students before our lessons by giving them a pretest and after the lessons by giving them a post test. Throughout the lessons we can assess students informally. Informal assessments are very important and can be done multiple ways. One way this can be done is asking questions and having students respond by put a thumbs up in the air if they agree or a thumbs down if they disagree. There are many different ways to informally assess students during our lessons that will help us to see if the students are grasping the information we are teaching them.

Unit Plans

  Looking through all the resources, creating unit plans seems very intimidating and overwhelming. Creating a unit plan requires a lot of thought, time and preparation.  In a unit plan there should be three different lesson types. The three lessons are: Direct, Inquiry and Cooperative. A direct lesson is a straightforward explicit learning strategy. This means that it is teacher centered and the teacher is in front of the classroom presenting the new information to the students. Some of the advantages to direct instruction is that the teacher has ultimate control of the material, the time, the pace etc. The next lesson type is an Inquiry lesson which is when students are actively involved through experiences where they are creating questions and investigating during the lesson. Some advantages to an inquiry lesson is that students are constructing their own knowledge, creating their own personal experiences and have the chance to really get involved with the new material they are learning. The last kind of lesson is a Cooperative lesson which is when students are grouped together

 in small groups and work together toward one common goal. Each group member has their own responsibilities and the group needs to effectively work together. Each lesson has their own positive and negative attributes. There are so many different parts that are crucial in a lesson and a unit plan. 

I feel very nervous about having to prepare three lessons to teach and a unit plan. I am fortunate enough that I took Social Studies Methods last semester, so at least I have experience from last semester. I am part of group 1 for teaching. So, this means that we will be going first. We are working with a 6th grade class and our topic is rocks and minerals. 

Diving into the First Week

The first week of classes are always so nerve wracking. It is fun to get to know your new classmates and teachers but it can also be a little scary. Fortunately, I took Social Studies Methods with Dr. Smirnova last semester, so I had a little idea of what to expect. This week was kind of bittersweet though because it was my last first week of classes! I am a senior and I am going to be student teaching in the spring! 

I am excited to take this class because I want to be able to improve my skills and knowledge of science. I am also excited to learn about different tools that will help to make science more exciting and engaging for students. I am a little nervous about having to teach 6th grade. 

For our first assignment in class we had to draw a picture of what we thought of when we heard the word scientist. I drew a scientist named Sandra working at a desk! This was a really good assignment because it allowed us to talk about some stereotypes that are often associated with scientists. This is also a really great assignment that we could do with our class in the future! Another assignment was to write a reflective paper called a Scientific Me.  In this paper we were asked to reflect about our past experiences with science. This was a great assignment to be completed on the first day because it gave me the chance to really think about science and how I felt about it as a student. I remembered that although I never hated science, it was never my favorite subject. I hope that throughout the semester I will learn different strategies on how to make science really fun for my students! 

Our last assignment was a Digital Me project. Each person in the class chose a web tool that they would use to introduce themselves to the class. We then put it on on a powerpoint presentation and presented it to the class! Each tool is also really helpful to use in a classroom. The tool that I used was Tagxedo, which is a word cloud. You can see it to the right. This tool was really easy to use and fun. I used about 20 words that really described me. This is great to use in a classroom because you can do so many things with it. For example you can use it before you start a chapter and put all the vocabulary words in it. There are so many options!